To defenders of the state, “anarchy” is a scary concept. They claim that we need government intervention to protect us or all hell will break loose. But in fact we live anarchy every day, in one of the most crucial aspects of our lives: dating. Every day people meet, date, have one-night stands, fall in love, and break up; all without government
The story of Sleeping Beauty always struck me as a libertarian fable. The central plot demonstrates the impotence of government: Aurora is cursed to prick her finger on a spinning wheel, and her royal father issues a decree that all spinning wheels should be burned. But all the king’s action does is put some poor weavers out of work. Aurora still
As governments expand their control over society, it can be easy for liberty advocates to get discouraged. As Obamacare imposes mandates and price controls on private health care, as the Federal Reserve manipulates currency, and as stories of police abuse become more common, one can be forgiven for thinking that freedom is on the decline. But in
In Ferguson, Missouri, when police and national guard failed to protect businesses from rioting protestors, a private organization called Oath Keepers stepped up to fill the gap. The presence of Oath Keepers , keeping the peace where police officers failed, helps answer a larger question: how necessary are police? The heart of the state’s
Many Americans, from the Glenview State Bank of Chicago to author Ellen Brown assume that the Nazi economic regime was successful, but closer examination tells a tale of rationing, shortages, and starvation. Learning why their economy failed can teach us how to avoid the same fate. Background The myth endures that after Hitler inherited a
The rise of behavioral economics has long been seen by statists as a body blow to libertarianism. By arguing that people are irrational consumers who are easily manipulated, behavioral economics seems to argue for state intervention to save us from ourselves. In his best-seller Predictably Irrational , behavioral economist Dan Ariely claims that
As Bill Maher indicates, the issue of a maximum wage is one that simply will not go away . The comedian and liberal pundit recently expressed support for a maximum wage of $300,000, arguing that wages for the bottom 90 percent of Americans stagnated while worker productivity rose. Greedy executives, in Maher’s scenario, are robbing the worker and
The great economist Frédéric Bastiat would have turned 214 today. His contributions to liberty have been many, but while so many advocates of free markets focus on The Law , there is another book that represents his legacy even better: Economic Sophisms . This short work of essays epitomizes perhaps his most important contribution: using taut
As election season ramps up, many people are falling into political camps and assuming that their candidate will be wholly different from either the current administration or the contenders in the other camp. But for the past eighty years, United States presidents have been remarkably similar once in office. Most presidents, whatever their
Most defenders of the state assume that government services help the poor. And, sometimes, some poor people do benefit financially from government programs. But there’s a hidden cost: taxation and mandatory programs (Social Security, for instance) that hurt the needy by restricting their choices. Government taxes away income that low-income
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.